Our Still in Belgrade monthly guide is bound to take you to the best parties, festivals, events and the finest crowds in town. Let’s see what’s going on this August and September in Belgrade.

August 25th

OPEN-AIR CINEMA @KC GRAD GARDEN

9pm-11pm

Supported by
Instituto Cervantes de Belgrado

Free
entrance

PAPELES EN EL VIENTO (2015), Serbian subtitles, movie in Spanish

When El Mono
dies, his three longtime friends try to recover from the loss and want to
secure his little girl’s future. But for Fernando, Mauricio and El Ruso this
will not be easy. They decide to recover a big investment El Mono had made when
he had bought a soccer player who was supposed to become a star.

Festival Rekonstrukcija 2019 will take place from 6-8 September, in Dorcol, Pancicev
park, Kralj Petar I elementary school, KC Stari grad (Ex Parobrod) culture
centre. Visitors can see how local street art crews are painting murals, public
art, listen to music, attend workshops and play games and buy various local
products.

Jungle
travel agency in cooperation with Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia –
Belgrade will showcase the latest edition of Indonesian market at Kalemegdan
fortress, in trench next to Military Museum.

Eat Indonesian
food, buy interesting products and listen to music! Exotics in the heart of
Belgrade!

Belgrade’s
favorite electronic music festival has revealed new artists and exciting new
location in the Port of Belgrade near Danube river for its fifth edition.

Envisioned
as the crowning of the summer festival season in the region, Apgrade is setting
the bar one step higher by adding a fourth, closing day to its program, along
with a second stage curated by Belgrade’s notorious Drugstore club. In
addition, Red Light Radio is to throw a special daytime party and broadcast at
the industrial complex of Port of Belgrade.

Apgrade is
Serbian capital’s leading electronic music promoter, hosting club nights all
year long in various venues across the city besides the September festival.

After four
editions in the iconic and historic ambience of the Belgrade Fortress, the
upcoming Apgrade festival is taking place in production-wise challenging and
visually impressive area of the Port of Belgrade. Step ∆p with us.

This year the 53rd Bitef will be held from the 17th until the 26th of September. During ten days of the festival audience will have the opportunity to watch cutting-edge productions from France, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Nigeria and Brazil.

Ivan Medenica, the art director of BITEF stated: At the conference last year I was touched by the words of journalist Vukica Strugar who asked “Should theater give us some comfort and hope in these hideous times we live in?” That emotion and that question stuck in my mind and I began to think how could BITEF help society, yet without resorting to some naive optimism. The slogan does sound optimistic this year (Beti Djordjević’s pop song) Let’s Start Love from the Beginning, will be inspiration point of this year’s festival – different forms of theater with an aim to revive humanistic values which ought to govern every society.

Medenica
pointed out also that the type of contemporary theatre which constructs this
alternative form of the community in a very obvious manner is the one based on
a greater participation of spectators, the removal of the naturalistic fourth
wall between the social reality of the audience and the fictional reality of
the stage and interaction and cooperation between the performers and the
spectators.

Today the most topical form of this interactive theater is usually defined as “immersive theater”. This novel community, based on participation, acquiescence and cooperation within a performance situation is the ultimate outcome of the main programme of the 53rd BITEF. It is realized in the production of Invited by choreographer Seppe Baeyens and the well-known Belgian company Ultima vez from Brussels which will close the 53rd BITEF, Medenica said.

The 53rd BITEF will open with Orestes in Mosul by Milo Rau, one of the greatest directors of the present time. In addition to Belgrade theaters, the main programme will take place also in alternative venues adapted for the 53rd BITEF.

Conceived in
close collaboration with the artist herself, the exhibition The Cleaner is the
first major European retrospective of Marina Abramović. The exhibition made its
debut in 2017 at the Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden), and has subsequently
traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk, Denmark), Henie
Onstad Kunstsenter (Oslo, Norway), Bundeskunsthalle (Bonn, Germany), Fondazione
Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italy) and the Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki
Czasu” (Toruń, Poland).

The Belgrade
exhibition is the last stop on this tour, and it holds unique significance as
it represents the artist’s return to her place of birth, where her career
began, and where she last had a solo exhibition in 1975, at the Salon of the
Museum of Contemporary Art.

The
exhibition chronologically reviews all of the phases of the artist’s
multifaceted fifty-year long career. This begins with her early paintings
(1960-1969) and conceptual works (1970-1972), followed by her solo performances
(1973-1975) and works created with former professional and personal partner
Ulay (1976-1988), a period in which she gained international acclaim.

Finally, the
artist’s solo career from 1991 to 2017, marks her establishment as one of the
greatest artists of today. The exhibition showcases over 120 artworks,
including paintings, drawings, objects, photographs, audio works, video
installations, films, scenography, re-performances and archival materials.
Among the works exhibited are anthological works of performance art (Rhythms,
1973-1974; Lips of Thomas, 1975; Relatonal works, 1976-1977; Nightsea Crossing,
1982-1986), as well as representative works from Abramović’s recent body of
work (Balkan Baroque, 1997; The Artist is Present, 2010).

The live
segment of the exhibition is presented through the re-performances of Marina
Abramović’s historical performances, which will be performed daily by local and
international performers. In addition, the exhibition will include works that call
for the active participation of the audience.

As part of
the exhibition, Marina Abramović will hold a public lecture, and a Master Class
for young artists.

The
accompanying programme of The Cleaner
includes film screenings, lectures about performance art and guided tours
through the exhibition.

Marina
Abramović (Belgrade, 1946) is one of the greatest performing artists and is the
only representative of the 1970s generation of radical performers that is still
active in the field of performance art. Throughout her career, Abramović has
constantly challenged the boundaries of performance art, experimenting with
different forms and genres like body art, relational performance,
long-durational performance, autobiographical performance, participatory performance
and re-performance. Her performances have relentlessly tested the limits of the
body’s physical and psychological endurance, social stereotypes and taboos,
cultural and gender identity, all while producing a strong affective impact on
audiences. These performances are complex structures of meaning, formed on the
intertwining between the literal and the symbolic, the material and the
spiritual, the physical and the mental, the intimate and the public, the
repetitive and the changing, the actual and the virtual.

For
Abramović, performance art is the art of transformation that develops through
the exchange of energy between the performer and the audience. It is the art of
“cleaning” that has the capacity to fundamentally change how one experiences
the self, others and of the collective, as well as how one relates to life
itself. The artist’s oeuvre indicates a constant search for methods and
techniques that release the energy of humans, objects and actions.

The
exhibition is locally organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

The
exhibition is produced by Moderna Museet, Stockholm, in collaboration with
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn

No Borders
Orchestra is on the road again! Building on a successful tour of the Balkans
during summer 2018 the No Borders Orchestra string ensemble, accompanied by
percussions and electronica, follow up in summer 2019 with another
international tour around the Western Balkans and Europe called “B Matinee”.

This
project, whose name suggests new beginnings, brings together contemporary
classical music and clubbing culture, and features cutting-edge new
compositions by five exciting young composers from the Balkan region. These
new, contemporary, experimental compositions are inspired by Berghain, the
famous Berlin club.

The 2019 B
Matinee tour also commemorates thirty years of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and
celebrates the tearing down of walls between classical and clubbing music.

By
communicating with contemporary techno sound, our composers cross genres,
surmounting the borders between different styles of music. The result is a new
and fresh sound that has no limits

Dragana Kostica is the Belgrade-based editor in chief and founder of Still in Belgrade art, culture and club scene magazine. She holds a Master of Arts in Cultural Policy and Management in Arts (MA of Arts) and a Bachelor degree in Archaeology.